It has received some love from back at home, but when it opened at the Toronto Film Festival last September, Dean Spanley got dissed from the trades like The Hollywood Reporter who found that this was the type of “low-budget project where no one has to worry about commercial appeal. Film festivals will be most understanding but distributors who want to make money will not” and Variety thought it felt like “an after-dinner anecdote presented with the full ceremony of a formal meal”.
Clearly this won’t be this year’s Happy-Go-Lucky project for the company, but perhaps a slate filler nonetheless in the fall? Screen Daily reports that Toa Fraser’s Dean Spanley was picked up by the English-fair friendly Miramax folks and unless they paid a dirt cheap price for it, I’m surprised that Miramax projects a return on their money — unless they think O’Toole can pack in some remaining audiences.
